Juhuuu!!! It´s„JOTA-TIME“ The weekend from 20st till 23rd of October 2017 the world wide biggest scout event on Ham-radio and computer JOTA (Jamboree on the Air) und JOTI (Jamboree on the Internet) took place. This yearly event is organised for over 10 years by Michael “Rambo” Rudloff the National Jota & Joti Coordinator from Namibia.

Over 50 Scouts / Pathfinders had 48 hours to contact as many other scout stations all over the world by radio communication or by chatting. The event started on Friday 12h00 and ended Sunday at 12h00. Every scout that took part at the event had to “log” each and every contact they made in a log sheet. It did not matter if it you communicated over radio or PC, the most important thing was that everyone had fun. At the end of the 48 hour event 2 trophies were waiting for the one scout with the most Radio contacts (JOTA) and one scout with the most chat contacts (JOTI)

Scouts from 1st Windhoek, 3rd Windhoek, 5th Windhoek and Otjiwarongo had a “blast” of a time at the National Amateur Radio Scout Station at HQ in Windhoek. Most scouts were into chatting with other scouts from all over the world. Only the “tough squad” 4 jung girls (Seraina17yo und Melina15yo Dickman, Annimie Harms14yo und Silke Rediker16yo operated the radio station V55JOTA and were competing against each other to win the “Rambo Cup”. 4 jung ladys (xyl) operating the Namibian Jamboree Station V55JOTA and the radio world went nuts…!!! Pileup after pileup… everyone wanted to talk to one of these girls.

We were very happy to have made contact with a few of our radio friends DL4MHT/DL0APJ and Mark DO4DXA from DL/Munich, Scouts from HB9S Switzerland, Austria, Antarctica…. ect. With a few of these stations we share a friendship for more than 5 years now. It is always such a joy seeing the children get so excited, when they hear one of these familiar call signs.

This Year the Jota/Rambo trophy went for the 2nd time to Silke Rediker from 5th Windhoek. Silke made 364 QSO´s (Radio contacts) over ham-radio all by herself. The Joti/Mufasa trophy this year went to Vino Kotze14yo from 1st Windhoek with 390 Internet/chat contacts. All Joti contacts counted together were 2089 chat contacts. Our “radio ladies” together made 993 QSO´s and only 42 of these contacts were made by Rambo…. In this 48 hours 67 stations out of these 993 radio contacts were Scout/Pathfinder stations and 54 of these stations were from different countries. Countries like Germany, Russia, Japan, USA, Indonesia, Canada, Brazil. We even managed to have a QSO (radio conversation) with an “old scout” sitting in a research station in Alaska.

All of us, Scouts and Cubs, big and not sooo big had a blast of an weekend. Fun, action and by faaaaarrrr to little sleep, but it was worth it - every minute.